


Left Atrium

by aph_pasta



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, F/M, going to be very sad, tropey-ish teen romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aph_pasta/pseuds/aph_pasta
Summary: Everyone's heart eventually stops beating and everyone eventually ceases to exist. For some, that comes sooner, rather than later.





	1. Arryhthmia

**Author's Note:**

> Well this is not going to be a happy topic and this will not be a happy fic. Based off of those Fault In Our Stars kind of books where two sick teenagers fall in love. This was originally a one-shot but it's turning out to be longer than I expected.
> 
> It should be noted that the events don't take place immediately after each other. The story takes place over the span of around a year.

The clock on Gilbert's wall read 10:30 and the heart monitor clipped to his finger wavered somewhere around 94 beats per minute. He had tried to sleep, but the awful, heavy exhaustion he'd felt during the day was gone now. Scrolling through Instagram could only entertain him so much, and when he'd messaged his friends, they'd told him they were too busy studying for the next day's math test to talk. He'd never been much of a wanderer, but his feet were restless and he needed a distraction from the ache in his chest. Gilbert grunted as he sat up and kicked his legs over the side of the bed. Sitting down next to his little cart stacked with machines and IVs, he glanced at his heart monitor and watched the numbers spike before going back to 94. 

 

It was weird having to push the cart around with him. He still hadn't gotten used to constantly being attached to something, and he didn't think he ever would. He'd learned from a rather unpleasant experience where he'd forgotten about it and tried to walk away without it, and now taking the metal pole in his hand was almost automatic. Gilbert was quiet as he opened his door, slowly enough that it wouldn't creak, and he was careful not to make too much noise as he walked down the hallway. He'd never explicitly been told that he wasn't allowed to get up and walk around when he pleased, but he figured it probably wasn't allowed- or was at least frowned upon. It was honestly quite strange to walk through a hospital at night. Even though it wasn't that late, many of the patients were sleeping and the lights in the corridor had been dimmed. He passed by a nurse's station, but they didn't seem to notice him. The corridor split up ahead, so he went to the right and found himself in a large room, with moonlight pouring in through floor-to-ceiling windows and a few couches and chairs placed around. There was one other person in the room, someone sitting on a long, curved couch and reading a book. 

 

Gilbert walked over and sat down on the other side. He looked over at the person, who hadn't even seemed to have noticed that someone else had entered. In the warm light of the lamp behind the couch, he could make out the person's face. It was a girl, with dark blonde eyebrows furrowed in at the center and her thin lips pursed as she read. She plucked the cap off of a highlighter and went over a few lines of text, then picked up a pencil sitting next to her and started to write something. Gilbert stared as she worked, enraptured by how intensely focused she seemed to be. The lamplight made her blonde hair glow and the red scrunchie holding it back sparkle. He tried to catch a glimpse of what she was reading, but the cover of the book was pressed against her lap and it didn't seem like she planned on moving it anytime soon. Gilbert scooted closer, leaning a bit to try to see. He still couldn't. 

 

Finally, he spoke up. “What are you reading?” The girl looked up at him and for some reason that was enough for him to realize she'd known he was there all along. He waited for an answer, but she just turned back to her book and kept reading. Gilbert scooted closer, reaching out and gently tugging his IV cart along with him. He leaned over and scanned over the page, until he found the title at the top. “Othello? Is it interesting?” 

 

The girl set her pencil in the book so she wouldn't lose her place and closed it. She stood up and picked up a little black bag with a tube running out of it, then walked five steps to the side and sat down at the very end of the couch. Gilbert knew he should probably leave her alone, but he was curious and bored, and with him that was never a good combination. He scooted next to her once more, IV cart trailing behind. “Shakespeare wrote that, right? I've read some of his stuff, it's pretty awesome.”

 

Silence.

 

Gilbert sighed and rested his chin in his hand. The girl picked up another highlighter, this time in pink, and highlighted a few words at the end of a sentence. She had gone back to ignoring him. 

 

“Okay, I started off bad. I'll fix it, though. Pretend the last two minutes never happened.” Gilbert stood up, then glanced at the girl for a reaction. She still hadn’t looked up, but her highlighter was hovering over the page and she was still. He took a few steps back, until he was at the other end of the couch. He walked forward once more, then sat down a few feet away from the girl, holding out a hand. “Hi. I'm Gilbert. Nice to meet you.”

 

After a few moments, the girl closed her highlighter and set it down. She reached out her hand and tentatively took his. “Iszabella.”

 

Iszabella's hand was small and cold. Her nails were bitten so short they just barely reached the tips of her fingers, and they were painted a pretty baby pink. She pulled away almost immediately and let the sleeve of her sweater fall back over her hand. They sat there in silence a few moments, Gilbert waiting for her to go back to her book and Iszabella waiting for him to say something else. She was surprised at herself when she was the one to finally break the silence. 

 

“So what are you doing here, bothering me when you should be in bed?”

 

Gilbert smirked and crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing here, reading Shakespeare when you should be in bed?”

 

Iszabella pensievely flicked a fraying edge of her book's back cover. Gilbert could see her thinking, almost as though there were gears turning in the back of her head, twisting her thoughts around and around until the right one came up. She played with the little clear tube attached to the bag and Gilbert followed it up, to where it split beneath her sharp chin and sat against the backs of her ears, coming to rest on her upper lip, just beneath her nose. “I couldn't sleep,” she said finally, her voice becoming soft again. She was embarrassed for some reason, something made obvious by the red coloring her cheeks and her sudden intense interest in staring at a spot on the floor. 

 

“I couldn't sleep either.”

 

“Oh.” Iszabella dog-eared the page of her book, closed it, and set it aside. 

 

“So why are you reading that book?”

 

“What do you mean why am I reading this book?” 

 

“I mean are you reading it for school, or yourself, or…?”

 

Iszabella shrugged. “Kinda both. This book wasn't like, assigned to me, but I'm supposed to read a play. It was between this and Angels in America, and this was what the bookstore had in stock,” she tapped the book beside her.

 

“Is it interesting?” 

 

Another shrug. “It's dark.” Iszabella drew her legs up to the couch and shifted to sit criss-cross applesauce. “I'm not even finished and I can already tell someone's going to die in the end. I don't like death, or things with sad endings.”

 

“So I bet you don't like this place.” Gilbert gestured around them, at the vinyl couches and his stupid IV cart and the signs on the wall welcoming them to the cardiac intensive care unit. He knew he should probably have shut up and not said that. After all, he didn't really want to be reminded of his own situation either. Gilbert cursed himself for yet again forgetting to filter his thoughts, and watched Iszabella's expression change. She was biting her lower lip and her eyebrows furrowed again. She didn't seem to be upset, though, which made Gilbert feel somewhat less guilty.

 

“No, I don't,” she decided finally. For a moment, she was still, her teeth still pressing down her lower lip, before she reached out and lifted up Gilbert's hand. She squinted at the hospital bracelet taped around his wrist, and read, “Gilbert Beilschmidt. Male. Sixteen years old,” she dropped his hand. “I thought you were older. Maybe twenty, twenty-one with this stubble. I think you could pass as old enough to buy me a drink.”

 

“Well, I do have a fake ID laying around somewhere.”

 

Iszabella smiled and turned towards Gilbert so she was actually looking at him. “Buy me a drink?”

 

Gilbert let out a little snort of laughter. “When I'm out of this place, my first stop will be the liquor store.”

 

“How long until you think you'll get out?” The conversation turned serious again and Gilbert was honestly surprised at how quickly Iszabella could change the mood with just a few words.

 

“I don't know,” he admitted. “The doctors don't exactly know what's wrong with me. I mean, they know my heart is failing, but they don't know why. I'm here until they figure it out and figure out how to stop it.” He watched Iszabella bite her lip again. He watched her think and realized her eyes were green, but they'd looked brown when she had been sitting with her side to the light, which was why he hadn't noticed it until then. 

 

“Well then we're in the same situation.”

 

Gilbert raised his eyebrows.

 

“I don't know when I'm getting out either.” Iszabella tucked her legs up against her chest and rested her chin against her knees. Her voice got quiet for a moment, almost as though she was speaking to herself, and she said, “I don't know if I'm getting out of here.” She pulled the scrunchie out of her hair and tied it back up and Gilbert felt his stomach twist. “I'm supposed to think positively, I'm an optimist.” From the sound of her voice, Gilbert expected her to start crying, but she didn't look on the verge of tears. Instead, she still just looked like she was thinking. “I'm waiting on a transplant. I was supposed to receive one two years ago, but I was really weak and the doctors didn't think I would survive surgery, so the heart went to someone else.”

 

“Oh.” Gilbert looked her over again and other than the cannula to help her breathe, it was impossible to tell she was even sick. Then again, he'd never spent much time in hospitals or around people who were dying, so he didn't know what they were supposed to look like. Even in his time here, which was nearing a week, he hadn't paid much attention to who did or didn't look sick. He wondered for a moment what other people thought of him, if they saw him and said ‘this guy looks sick’.

 

“You're going to ask why I need a transplant now, aren't you?”

 

Gilbert nodded. 

 

“I figured as much. Everyone wants to know. It's like as soon as you end up in the hospital, all your privacy goes out the window.”

 

“You don't have to tell me.”

 

Iszabella laid her head on her knees and looked sideways at Gilbert. She smiled, with a little bit of sadness and a sort of knowing wisdom that went far beyond her age. “I want to tell you. You're stuck in here with me, it's not like there's any reason for you not to know. I was born two months premature with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and an atrial septic defect. I guess the best way to explain it is that only half of my heart really works, and like there's a hole in the top, between the two parts. I had three operations when I was younger that were supposed to fix it, and things like, worked out for a few years, but then the muscles in my heart started to weaken and I ended up back in the hospital. Since then I've had times where my heart doesn't beat right and I've had infections. I started having like, really severe breathing problems and my heart got weaker. I had a stroke two years ago, just before I was supposed to have my transplant. I have a pacemaker now but tomorrow I'm getting it replaced with a defibrillator. I'm towards the top of the transplant list, but we're still waiting.”

 

Gilbert’s eyes were wide and he was still processing everything she'd told him. Iszabella watched him think over everything she'd told him, watched that concerned, sorrowful look she knew so well from others come onto his face.

 

“I’m just focusing on now. I'll keep reading my plays, keep living my life. I'm not dead yet.” Iszabella smiled and Gilbert couldn't help but give a small smile back. She reached out and poked just below his lower lip. “Your glow-in-the-dark braces totally ruin the whole looking like an adult thing.”

 

“Hey, glow-in-the-dark stuff is awesome!”

 

“Said no adult ever.”

 

Gilbert crossed his arms and looked at her as though he was offended. “Excuse me, my glow-in-the-dark braces are so awesome I could go into any liquor store on earth, smile, and get five free bottles of beer!”

 

Iszabella laughed, soft and a little scratchy, held back by the heel of her hand pressed against her mouth. When she finally finished the last of her giggling, she looked serious again, and for a moment Gilbert wondered if she was going to tell him something else about herself or her medical condition. “You know, I expected you to be an asshole. You're not an asshole, though.” Gilbert raised his eyebrows and bit back a surprised laugh. “I actually like you. Hey, you should come visit me tomorrow. In the afternoon, after I’ve had my operation. My room's number 305.”

 

With that, she grabbed her book and slung her little black bag over her shoulder, then walked away, down the side of the corridor opposite to where Gilbert had come in.

 

\----

 

It took a little time for Gilbert to find room 305, because it wasn't just on the other side of the corridor, as he had expected. It was on an entire other floor, where long term patients were housed. There were more amenities than on his floor, and when he came to stand awkwardly in the doorway of Iszabella's room, he found that she'd completely personalized it with pictures of her friends and horses and nearly a mountain of fluffy blankets and stuffed animals in various shades of pink. She was in bed, partially sitting up, wearing a pajama shirt patterned with cats and sporting a large bandage just below her collarbone. A man and a woman, both nearly identical to her in looks, were sitting at the head of the bed, and a boy about her age was sitting on her other side, flipping through her copy of Othello.

 

“Oh wow. Hey there braceface, I didn't think you'd actually show up.” Iszabella looked up at Gilbert and gave him a little smile. Her voice was groggy and weak, but still held that same slightly sassy tone.

 

“So I'm braceface now?” he asked as he stepped into the room. He glanced at the people who must have been her parents and they gave him an odd look. “You didn't tell them I was coming, did you?”

 

Iszabella shook her head. “That's alright, I'll introduce you,” she pointed at her parents, and said, “Braceface, this is Feliks and Magdalena. Feliks i Magdalena, to mój przyjaciel Braceface.” 

 

Her parents gave Gilbert an even odder look, before finally, her father spoke up, in a heavily accented voice. “Your parents gave you very ugly name.”

 

Gilbert glared at Iszabella and she just gave him her little smirk and turned pointedly towards the boy at her side, as though to say he'd have to work this out for himself.

 

“No, er- my name's not braceface. It's Gilbert. Iszabella just calls me that.”

 

“Oh, so is your nickname?”

 

Gilbert shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.” Off to the side, Iszabella laughed. He glanced behind him and noticed a chair sitting next to the dresser. He dragged it over next to the boy at Iszabella's side, leaving enough space between them that it wasn’t awkward and his IV pole would have somewhere to go. “I didn't know you spoke another language. Or, well, that your parents aren't from here.”

 

“Oh yeah, forgot to mention that, didn't I? They're from Poland, they speak enough English to get by but I still end up being their translator most of the time.”

 

He nodded in understanding. “That’s awesome. So, anyway, how are you feeling?” He asked, to change the subject. Gilbert looked Iszabella over another time, trying to remember just what she'd looked like the night before. Now, she seemed less overwhelming and more mellowed out, and he could sense that physically, she was a little uncomfortable. In the brighter light of the hospital room, he noticed faded freckles on her cheeks and the bridge of her upturned nose. 

 

“Okay, I guess. The anesthesia's still getting out of my system so I still feel kinda gross.”

 

Gilbert nodded, though he didn't exactly understand how she felt. The most sedation he'd ever had was a bit of laughing gas at the dentist. 

 

“I should introduce you two too. Braceface, this is Tolys. He's been my best friend since I was like, two.” 

 

Tolys looked up and closed the book. “Actually, we’ve known each other since you were one. I was two.” Iszabella reached out and arm and he reluctantly leaned in to let her give him a half-hug. 

 

“Either way, I've known you since like forever.”

 

Tolys smiled and carefully pulled away. He let Isabella hold onto his hand and play with the little black spinner ring on his thumb, though. “So, how did you two meet?” he asked, glancing over at Gilbert.

 

Gilbert was about to answer, but Isabella beat him to it. “He found me last night and started bothering me,” she grinned and Gilbert saw a little sparkle of something in her eyes. 

 

“I see,” Tolys replied, giving a nod. “And Izzy, if you want to play with my ring, just take it off my hand instead of keeping the whole entire thing.”

 

Iszabella shook her head. “No. Your hand's mine now. It's warm.” Tolys gave a resigned sigh and let her continue to hold onto him. She looked over at Gilbert once more, biting her lip as she thought. “How are you doing?”

 

“Aren't you the one who just had surgery?”

 

“Yeah, but you're the one still waiting for a diagnosis.”

 

Gilbert nodded in agreement. “Still don't have one. I have an appointment with some specialist tomorrow and they're looking at doing some sort of thing where they put a tube in your heart to see what's wrong.”

 

“Cardiac catheterization?”

 

“Yeah, something like that.”

 

Iszabella gave him a small, sympathetic smile. “I can say from experience it's honestly not that bad. You feel a little weird inside after and you can't move your leg for a few hours, but it doesn't hurt or anything.”

 

Gilbert looked down at his lap, then up at Iszabella again. Even with her reassurances, the way the doctor had described it had scared him. He would never admit it, but hospitals and doctors and surgery frightened him. Instead, he admitted something else that was far less embarrassing. “I've never had surgery before.”

 

“I've had…” Iszabella paused and started counting on her fingers, whispering to herself as she did. “Eight, including this one. I don't remember the first ones, but I honestly don't think it's all that scary. The people operating on you know what they're doing. They like, make sure everything's okay and you're safe.”

 

Iszabella's hand stilled and she rested it on top of Tolys's, which was in her lap. Her other hand came up to her mouth and she stifled a yawn. “I'm tired. Will you come visit me tomorrow braceface?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Promise?”

 

Gilbert grinned, wide enough to show all his glow-in-the-dark braces. He leaned forward and hooked his pinky under the very tip of Iszabella's, careful not to awkwardly touch Tolys's hand. “Promise.”

 

\----

 

“Hey Iszabella, I got a surprise for you!” Gilbert poked just his head into her room, careful to hide himself behind the doorframe. She looked up from her phone and immediately started smiling. He walked in the room, holding an Xbox and two controllers. “My friends visited and brought me this, and I need someone to play it with.”

 

Iszabella put down her phone and grabbed the remote by her bed so the head would come forward and she could sit up. Gilbert busied himself with connecting the xbox to the TV, and Iszabella watched amusedly. “I'm pretty sure you put the red plug in the red hole, and then uh… these two black ones go somewhere…” He figured it out after a few minutes and the TV blinked on to a loading screen. Gilbert was about to pull up a chair and sit by the side of Iszabella's bed, but she scooted over and patted the space next to her. He hesitated a moment before sitting down next to her. She immediately laid her head on his shoulder, sitting with her side against his.

 

“You’re warm.”

 

For a moment, Gilbert didn’t know how to respond. He tended to be a little awkward when it came to affection. He could feel that Iszabella was cold, though, and decided there was no reason for him to think she was initiating anything. Gilbert let out the breath of nervousness he’d been holding and pressed the button at the top of his controller to turn it on. The home screen came up, and Gilbert grinned down at Iszabella. “You ready to get your ass kicked?”

 

“You wish.”

 

\----

 

“So when’s the surgery scheduled?”

 

“Tuesday. At three in the afternoon.” Gilbert twirled his hospital bracelet around and around his wrist. He couldn’t force himself to make eye contact with Iszabella.

 

“And how do you feel about it?”

 

The words got stuck in Gilbert’s throat. He knew he was being ridiculous, that it was completely normal to be scared. He’d always felt like being scared equaled being weak, though, and he wasn’t going to allow himself to be weak. 

 

Iszabella ruffled his silvery hair and pushed it back so she could see his eyes. “What are you thinking about right now?”

 

“Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to ask you that?”

 

Iszabella tilted her head to the side and gave him a little mischievous grin. “No. How many?”

 

“Too many to count,” he gently took her wrist and pulled it away from his forehead. “I can always tell when you’re thinking, your eyes get dark and you just look really focused. I like it.”

 

“But what are you thinking?” she asked again. Gilbert cursed her persistence. He never seemed to be able to avoid a topic with her. What was really odd, though, was that he didn’t truly feel annoyed by the way she would always make him talk about what bothered him. Even if it made him uncomfortable at first, he always felt better afterwards about having gotten something off his chest. It worked even better than writing in his journals, where he tended to pour all of his thoughts that were too dark or weird or emotional to be seen.

 

“I’m thinking about how I feel,” his finger caught on the flap inside the hospital bracelet, “about the surgery.”

 

Iszabella ruffled up his hair again and pressed the heel of her hand against his forehead so he would look at her. “How do you feel?”

 

Gilbert shrugged and turned his head away. 

 

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

 

Gilbert felt like shaking his head. Something was stopping him, though, so he just shrugged again.

 

Iszabella could sense he was more uncomfortable than he usually got when she tried to get him to talk about something he didn’t want to, and she decided to pull back a little, so she wouldn’t be forcing him into anything. “You can always talk to me. I promise.”

 

“Thanks.” Gilbert paused and sat back against the pillows. He carefully stretched his arms out above his head and cracked his mouth open in a yawn. When he put his arms back down, he picked up the Xbox controller that had been resting just above his knees. “Wanna keep playing?”

 

\----

 

**Gilbert:** Can you come over? I want to talk.

 

\----

 

Iszabella had become an expert at sneaking through the halls of the hospital at night. When she was younger, she’d wandered around when she couldn’t sleep, and found all the staff elevators and hidden corridors, and with that knowledge, it only took her around five minutes to get to Gilbert’s room. There was a sliver of light shining through the cracked open door and she gently pushed it open. Gilbert was sitting with his back against the pillow and his legs against his chest. The sheet was loosely draped over him and his eyes looked redder than usual. 

 

She closed the door behind her and sat down on the very edge of Gilbert’s bed. She could feel him hesitate, feel the tension between them and the nervousness he was radiating. It felt like the kind of situation where she needed to speak in a whisper, to be slow and gentle with her every move. “What’s bothering you?” she asked softly. 

 

Gilbert looked over to her then back down at the sheets in front of him. He traced the pattern with his eyes, going over the little circles and squares and diamonds. He opened his mouth a little, then closed it again, gritting his teeth. Iszabella looked over at him, then took off her slippers and scooted closer to him on the bed. This time, he didn’t even hesitate before moving closer to her, so their shoulders were against each other. 

 

“I’m scared.” He felt small and helpless when he said it, like he was a child again going to tell his parents he’d had a nightmare. 

 

Iszabella nodded and wrapped an arm around him. “I know. It’s normal to be scared. Everyone gets scared sometimes.”

 

“I know that too, and I know I’m being stupid. I don’t like being weak like that, though. I’m not supposed to get freaked out by something like surgery, it’s a part of life.”

 

“Sometimes life can be scary.”

 

Gilbert nodded. He laid his head on her shoulder, shifting to the side a little so he could do so comfortable because she was so much shorter than him. He took in a breath and felt Iszabella start to rub his side, making little circles with the palm of her hand.

 

“I have a little brother. He’s only six, and he does everything I do. I’m his biggest role model. When I started playing soccer for school, he wanted to play it too. When I got a pet, he wanted one too. Hell, when I got braces, he cried because he couldn’t get them yet. I don’t want to ruin how he sees me, I don’t want him to think I’m not brave and I’m not awesome anymore.”

 

Iszabella reached over and brushed his hair out of his eyes, and she could feel that his cheeks were damp. “So that’s what’s been bothering you?”

 

Gilbert nodded.

 

“I feel like it’s kind of stupid, though. I mean, you wouldn’t admit that you’re scared, and it made you miserable to keep that all inside, and now you’re just gonna teach your brother the same thing. Like, if he ever has to have surgery or something at the doctor that scares him, he’ll think he’s overreacting because he saw that you weren’t scared at all. You shouldn’t try to hide how you feel. At least, that’s what I think.”

 

Gilbert nodded again. He licked his upper lip and tasted the saltiness of tears and felt the cool of Iszabella’s hand when she stroked his hair once more. “I’m still worried he won’t think I’m awesome anymore.” 

 

“Why?”

 

“I dunno,” Gilbert shrugged. “I guess he’ll just think I’m weak or I’m acting like a little kid.”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with being weak sometimes. If we were always perfect and brave, it would be weird. We’d be like, sociopaths.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Gilbert cracked a tiny smile. “You’re right.” He looked up at Iszabella for a second, just to glance at her gentle smile and the soft pink tint to her cheeks. When he laid his head back on his shoulder, they lapsed into a comfortable silence, Iszabella rubbing his side and Gilbert thinking.

 

“Izzy?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Tomorrow, after my surgery’s over, would you come visit me?”

 

Iszabella pressed the heel of her hand against her chin and let her fingers cover half of her smile. She looked down at Gilbert, at the messy silvery hair and nearly clear eyelashes and the little crooked bit of bone under the bridge of his nose. She leaned in and gave a quick, barely there kiss to the top of his forehead. “Of course.”

 

\----

 

Gilbert said one last goodbye to his younger brother, and waved at him the entire time he walked out the door. Once his family was gone, he laid his head back against the pillows propping him up and lazily looked over at Iszabella.

 

“You’re good with kids. I could tell Ludwig really liked you.”

 

Iszabella smiled bashfully and looked down at her lap. “It’s just always kinda come naturally. Plus, he’s really cute, and he seems really smart for his age.”

 

“He’s already doing third grade math,” Gilbert said proudly. 

 

“You really love him, don’t you?”

 

Gilbert nodded. “Of course I do. He’s my little brother.” He pressed his lips together for a moment as he searched through his memory. “You know, I used to ask my parents all the time for a brother, I always wanted someone to play with and to be able to kinda take care of. I didn’t know until I was older, but my mother had two miscarriages before she had Luddy. I’m so lucky I have him.”

 

Iszabella gave a soft hum of understanding. Then, there was silence between them, but it was the comfortable kind. The only noise was the soft beeping in the background of Gilbert’s heart monitor, and the steady rhythm assured her that everything was alright. 

 

“Do you ever want kids?” Gilbert asked.

 

“Yeah. I always have.”

 

“I think you’d be a good mother.”

 

Iszabella cupped her hands over her mouth, but that didn’t hide how widely she was smiling. Her cheeks reddened quickly and she was flustered by not only how kind the comment had been but how it was the kind of reaction she almost never got. She’d been asked so many times by people who must not have realized how offensive they were being if she would even live long enough to have children, let alone raise them.

 

“I want kids too. It would be awesome to have a ton of mini-mes running around.”

 

Iszabella let out a little snort of laughter. “What if your kids are nothing like you?”

 

“It would still be awesome.”

 

“Fair enough.” She uncrossed her legs and stretched them out until her toes touched the legs of Gilbert’s bedside table.

 

Gilbert found himself staring at how the mottled gold of the sunset washed over Iszabella’s face and her dark green sweatshirt and the backs of her hands. Her cheeks were still slightly pink and her lower lip was bruised a dark red from her biting it. For a moment, all he could think of was just how cute that habit of hers was. He was brought back, though, by her question.

 

“What do you want your future to be like?”

 

“Haven’t given it much thought. I like living in the moment and just letting life happen.”

 

Iszabella raised an eyebrow.

 

“I guess if I really had to decide, I want to do something with engineering. Maybe learn how to make airplanes. That would be awesome. I wanted to join the air force for a while when I was younger. I want to have kids, maybe some dogs, lots of birds. I like stuff that can fly.” He gave Iszabella a quick little grin. “What do you want?”

 

She began to speak without any hesitation, saying what she wanted with the kind of certainty that made it obvious she’d spent a long time thinking this over. “Well I want to become a doctor- a cardiologist. I want to get married, to someone who’s taller than me and has a nice smile. I want kids, like three or four of them, and I want to live in the countryside and have a huge property with lots of room for horses to run around. I want to have a grand piano in the living room and paintings on the walls and I want like, huge floor-to-ceiling windows in my bedroom so every morning I wake up to sunshine.”

 

Gilbert watched her after she’d finished speaking. He didn’t have any words, didn’t know how to reply. He was lost in her eager smile and the way she’d started to lean forward as she told him everything, as though ready to jump out of her seat in excitement. Iszabella sat back, though, as soon as she noticed him staring, and she felt a lump start to form in her throat. She liked Gilbert and she trusted him, but she also knew he could be insensitive at times and she just knew he was going to say something about whether she would even be able to have those things.

 

“I think that’s awesome.”

 

“You do?”

 

“Yeah. You already know exactly what you want for the rest of your life, I don’t even know what I want for breakfast tomorrow.”

 

Iszabella couldn’t help but giggle.

 

\----

 

Iszabella felt some sort of presence and she looked up, expecting one of her nurses to be coming in. Instead, there was a familiar mop of silvery hair and glow-in-the-dark grin in the doorway. Gilbert took a few steps in and she saw his hands were cupped carefully over his chest. As he came closer to the bed, she heard soft noises coming from the same general area. 

 

“I brought you a surprise,” he said, a mischievous look in his eyes. He came to stand right next to the bed and carefully set down the thing he was holding. 

 

“Is that…” Iszabella stared at the fluffy little yellow ball. “Is that a bird?”

 

“It’s not just any bird. It’s Gilbird!”

 

She suddenly burst out laughing. When she finally composed herself, she managed to say, “did you seriously name an animal after yourself?”

 

Gilbert didn’t seem to understand what was so funny. He gave a nod, a serious expression on his face, then sat down next to Iszabella and picked the bird back up. “Do you want to hold him?” he asked.

 

“Can I?”

 

“Of course.” He set the bird in her lap and crossed one of his legs over the other to create a small wall so Gilbird couldn’t wander away. Iszabella stared in wonder at it, then reached out her hand and gently pet it with her pointer finger.

 

“He’s so soft.”

 

The bird chirped, almost as though acknowledging that it had been complimented. It walked down to her knee, and she carefully lifted her leg so it wouldn’t walk off of it. Gilbird turned back towards her and started pecking at her pajama pants, which made her laugh. “So, how did you manage to sneak your pet into the hospital?”

 

“Well,” Gilbert shifted so he was sitting on his knees, “I really missed him and I thought maybe I should bring him here so I can hang out with him and he can cheer some people up. I called my brother, I call him and my parents and my grandpa every night, and I asked him how Gilbird was doing. He’s been taking care of him and my other chicks, and he’s done a great job. I asked him if when he came to visit me today he could put Gilbird in the little travel cage I use if I need to take one of my birds to the vet with some food and water, and if he could put that in his backpack with the zippers open an inch or two for air. He did that and got in just fine, and now Gilbird’s spending the week with me. Or well, with us, since I’ll share him with you. He can stay in my room, though. I’ve been hiding his cage in a drawer whenever someone comes around, and no one’s discovered him yet.” He winked, and reached out to pet the bird.

 

“Thank you for sneaking him in. He’s doing a good job of cheering me up.” Iszabella held one of her hands flat against the side of her leg so Gilbird wouldn’t topple off as he hopped around. “Do you think next time, you could like, sneak in a horse for me?”

 

Gilbert laughed. “Well, you never know what you can do until you try.”

 

\----

 

Something was wrong.

 

Iszabella woke up covered in sweat. Her hand shook when she reached up to wipe the dampness away from her forehead. Her heart was pounding.

 

Her heart was pounding.

 

She couldn’t breathe and she fumbled to see if her cannula had fallen off while she was sleeping, but she felt dizzy and numb and couldn’t feel anything.

 

When she did feel something, it was a sharp blow to her chest, from the inside, a rush of electricity and white-hot pain that blinded her.

 

She screamed.


	2. Cardioversion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who left kudos and comments! I loved reading all of your guys's feedback, and I've really enjoyed writing this story.

“I looked it up online, and some people say having an internal defibrillator go off is like getting punched in the back.”

 

Iszabella thoughtfully tilted her head to the side. “A punch probably isn’t enough. It was more like getting hit with a baseball bat. I think the worst part was how sudden it was, though. Like I would have at least liked some warning.”

 

“You’re alive. That’s what matters.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Gilbert reached out and brushed a bit of flyaway hair behind her ear. When his finger brushed against her skin, he could feel that she was cold. She was always cold, even now that she was wearing a heavy sweatshirt and huddled under two blankets. He thought back to days before this one, sitting next to her with an arm around her waist as though that would transfer his warmth to her. He kind of wanted to sit next to her again, but it would be awkward, because she was laying down. She’d said that sitting up made her feel dizzy. 

 

He wondered why she hadn’t cried once, not even after she’d told him that her blood oxygen content had dropped and her heart had begun pounding to try to make up for it, which had set off the defibrillator. He wondered why he’d felt like crying, why he felt so strongly about this. It wasn’t fair, he thought, that Iszabella had to go through so many terrible things. He didn’t understand, maybe because he couldn’t fathom it, how she was so calm and collected and not worried. He didn’t understand how she wasn’t freaking out about the fact that she was now more than two times more likely to die in the next three years.

 

Or maybe he did understand, because she seemed to have already accepted that and all the other grim facts. Maybe he just didn’t want to accept it because he couldn’t bear the thought of Iszabella dying.

 

“Gil?” she asked softly, “what are you thinking about?” She gently clasped her fingers under his and pulled them away from her cheek, where his hand had been resting. 

 

“Nothing important. Breakfast tomorrow. I hope there’s blueberry pancakes again.”

 

Iszabella smiled gently and squeezed the tips of his fingers. “I like the chocolate ones better.”

 

Gilbert smiled down at her. He kept his fingers on top of the palm of her hand even after she’d set it down on her pillow. She hadn’t pushed him away, and he found he didn’t want to move away. Part of the reason was an unspoken fear that if he wasn’t right there with her, something bad would happen or she would disappear. 

 

“Tell me a story?” she asked.

 

Gilbert hummed thoughtfully as he searched his mind for something worth telling. “I’ve been best friends with these two guys, Francis and Antonio, since we were in sixth grade. We all met in detention the first week of school. We got in detention a lot after that. I think the best thing we did was to our ninth-grade history teacher, Mr. Vargas. He’s this old guy, he’s funny, so we know he can take a joke, and he was retiring that year, so we wanted to send him out with a bang. We got a ton of bubble wrap, like more than any human being should need. We stayed really late after school and as soon as he left, we picked the lock to his classroom and went in and bubble wrapped everything. The chairs, the desks, his computer, even little stuff like markers. We closed everything up and the next day, we had his class first period. It took him nearly two days to unwrap everything. It was awesome.” He chuckled, and Iszabella laughed softly as well.

 

“So you’re a bad boy, huh?”

 

Gilbert smiled proudly and nodded.

 

“Tell me another story. I need something to listen to so I don’t fall asleep.”

 

“If you’re tired, you should sleep.”

 

Iszabella shook her head sharply. “No. I can’t.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Something could happen.”

 

“You need to rest. You need to heal.”

 

She shook her head again, lips pursed stubbornly. Gilbert could feel her hand shaking and he carefully moved his own slightly to the right so he could clasp their fingers together and steady her. ”I know you’re scared, but nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

 

“How do you know that’s true?”

 

Gilbert sighed and shrugged. “I don’t.”

 

“See. It’s better if I stay up.”

 

“But Izzy-”

 

She shook her head once more, and he knew there was no way he was going to win this argument. There was no sense in trying to win either. He just squeezed her hand and eventually nodded. “Alright, I’ll stay up with you.”

 

“Tell me another story? One about your little brother?”

 

Gilbert smiled. “Yeah, sure.” He combed his memories for some of the better, more interesting ones. “When Ludwig was little, he had trouble saying the letter s. At first it was kind of a lisp, but then it just turned into him making an sh sound. My mother used to always tell him to sit down and he’d say really loudly that he was sitting, but because of the way he talked, it sounded like he was saying that he was shitting. I’ll never let him forget that. I’ve vowed to tell it at his wedding.”

 

“That’s mean!” Iszabella replied, but she couldn’t help but smile. 

 

“It’s my job as his big brother to embarrass him.”

 

Iszabella shifted onto her back, careful not to move her hand away from Gilbert’s. She stared up at the ceiling, her bottom lip tucked under her front teeth. Gilbert had come to recognize this expression as one of trying to ignore pain or something else that was bothering her. 

 

“Is there anything else I can do to make you feel better? I can go get Gilbird if you want.”

 

She didn’t respond, just bit down harder on her lip. 

 

“Izzy?”

 

She released her lip and looked over at him, as though nothing had happened in the last few seconds. “I was just thinking, I hope we have those chocolate cakes with lunch tomorrow. You know like, the ones with the apricot jam.”

 

“Oh,” Gilbert said softly. “If you want one now, I can go get you one.”

 

Iszabella gave a sad smile. “It’s too late. The kitchen will have been closed for hours now.”

 

“I’ll sneak in.”

 

“Really?”

 

Gilbert stood up and stretched his arms above his head, making a popping sound with his shoulder that brought a grimace to Iszabella’s face. “Yeah. I’ll go do it right now. You just sit tight, I’ll be back before you know it.”

 

“Gil, that’s sweet but I don-”

 

He was already out the door before she could finish her sentence.

 

Iszabella sighed and searched for her bed’s remote so she could sit up. A heavy drowsiness had settled over her and she wanted nothing more than to let it pull her in, but in the silence around her she could hear, nearly feel the beating of her heart, and when her hand pressed against the familiar spot below her collarbone, she could feel the little machine beneath her skin. It could go off at any second, without warning. Her heart could start racing and it would shock her all over again and it could come at any time. 

 

Her heart was racing, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe, like something was caught in her throat. Tears prickled at her eyes.

 

Gilbert walked in with a paper plate holding a sizeable slice of cake. He set that and a plastic fork in Iszabella’s lap, then sat down next to her on the bed, because she was sitting up now and doing so had become routine. He noticed tears in her eyes and that her hands were shaking and was about to ask what was wrong, but before he could even open his mouth, her hands were on his cheeks and she was pulling him towards her with more strength than he’d ever thought she had. When she kissed him, he let out a startled squeak and for a moment didn’t know what to do with his hands or how to respond, but she took one hand off his cheek and let it rest on his back instead, and he pulled her closer and closed his eyes, instinct taking over.

 

The kiss couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but to Gilbert it felt like an eternity. When Iszabella pulled away, smiling sheepishly down at her cake with her hands in her lap- still shaking, albeit less so-, all Gilbert could do was stare. For a moment, he wondered when she’d started to feel this way for him, if she’d planned this or just did it on a whim, but then he found himself wondering when he’d started to feel this way for her, if it had ever been something conscious or if he’d just somehow known somewhere deep inside himself, as soon as he saw that girl with Shakespeare in her lap and freckles on her face, someday he’d want to kiss her and hold her and protect her from everything he possibly could because life had already dealt her such cruel cards.

 

And then, he didn’t have any more time to think about that, because Iszabella was kissing him again.

 

\----

 

“I read somewhere that you’re supposed to bring a girl flowers on your first date with her, but we’re not allowed to have flowers in my part of the ward, so instead I brought you this,”

 

Gilbert pulled a stuffed unicorn out from behind him. It was three different shades of pink, and had a sparkly purple horn. He handed it to Iszabella, who covered her smile with one hand and took the stuffed animal with the other. She hugged it to her chest and rested her chin against the soft, fluffy head. “This is so cute!” she exclaimed.

 

Gilbert was just glad that she was happy. Even though she constantly assured him she was fine now, he couldn’t help but worry about her. He sat down next to her on the bed, a smile on his lips as he watched her fawn over the unicorn. Eventually, she put it down in her lap and scooted closer to Gilbert, then draped her legs across his lap and leaned against him. He was still getting used to holding her, and was careful when he put his arm around her. He’d come to realize that physically, she was quite fragile, something she tried hard to hide with the way she dressed and carried herself. She was thin, to the point where he could feel the bones of her spine through her sweatshirt, and she always seemed to be cold, sometimes to the point of shaking and shivering. Despite this, she was strong as a person, much more so than even Gilbert’s cousins who were in the military, whom he’d admired since childhood. Now, he held that same kind of admiration for Iszabella. 

 

“So. Our first real date, huh? What do you want to do?”

 

“Same thing we always do. The only difference between now and before is that I can kiss you instead of just staring at your lips and like, hoping you’ll make the first move or something.”

 

Gilbert raised an eyebrow. “How long have you-”

 

“Forever,” Iszabella replied softly, a knowing, somewhat coy look in her eye. “Since you talked to me. I’ve always liked you. It was only a matter of time.” She took Gilbert’s hand and linked their fingers together, resting their hands against the unicorn in her lap. “What about you? Did you ever start liking me?”

 

Gilbert shrugged, then hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “I like you, but I don’t think I realized I did until you didn’t give me a choice but to pay attention to my feelings. I guess I never really knew what I felt was liking.”

 

“You’ve never dated before?”

 

Iszabella wanted to laugh at the nervous, bashful look that came into Gilbert’s eyes, but she also didn’t want to insult his inexperience. When he shook his head, she just gave his hand a gentle squeeze and he smiled gratefully. “The last two years I went to homecoming with a girl my friends kinda pushed me to go with, since I didn’t want to be the only one without a date, but I’ve never had anything more serious than that. I kinda avoided dating. I never really understood how to talk to girls, and I kinda still don’t.”

 

“You’re talking to me.”

 

“Yeah, but you’re different. You’re easy to talk to, and you like video games and stuff I understand.”

 

“That’s why you like me.”

 

Gilbert nodded in agreement, though that didn’t even cover a quarter of the reasons why he liked Iszabella. Even before he’d ever thought of her as anything more than a friend, he’d liked her for millions of different reasons. He’d liked that they could carry conversations well, but she also was fine with silence and it didn’t become awkward. He’d liked how smart she was, how she always seemed to be thinking. He liked the freckles on her cheeks and the way she covered her mouth when she smiled to try to hide it.

 

He reached up and brushed some hair out of her eyes, just for an excuse to cup her cheek and run his thumb over the soft skin. “Do you wanna play something?” he asked. 

 

Iszabella leaned her head into his hand. “Halo. Or Red Dead Redemption. I don’t really care, you pick.”

 

“We’ll play Halo, since the disk is already in,” he decided.

 

The controllers were just next to Gilbert, on Iszabella’s bedside table, but he didn’t make any move to grab them. He was still stroking Iszabella’s cheek, and when she wasn’t looking (he tended to get embarrassed about making eye contact when they were doing something romantic), he kissed her forehead. She rested her forehead just below the curve of his jaw and he could feel her smile against the side of his neck.

 

\----

 

As summer came closer and closer, it stopped raining so often and they found themselves enjoying more and more sunny days. Iszabella couldn’t stand or walk for long periods of time without feeling dizzy, so Gilbert found a spare wheelchair and took her out in it.

 

The hospital had a large enough garden area behind it. There was a seldom-used playground that nature had begun to reclaim and a few cracked cement pathways leading around an overgrown field. Gilbert pushed the wheelchair up to the edge of the grass and helped Iszabella up, even though she insisted she was able to stand up on her own. They sat together in a little patch of wildflowers, and Gilbert laid down on the grass, staring up at the sky with a stupid grin on his face.

 

Iszabella leaned over him, picking the wildflowers that surrounded him and making little crescent-shaped holes in the stems so she could thread them together.

 

“That cloud looks kinda like a guy beating another guy with a rolling pin.”

 

Iszabella laid on her back, her head on Gilbert’s stomach, so she could see what he was looking at.

 

“No, it’s a cat reaching for a ball of string. The ears are like right there,” she pointed up at the sky.

 

“You’re looking at it from the wrong angle. Come over here next to me,” he patted the grass beside his head. Iszabella let out a loud, exaggerated sigh, and turned so her head was right next to his.

 

“I don’t see it. I’m telling you, it’s totally a cat.”

 

“You have to keep looking. Open your mind to new perspectives or some hippie shit like that.”

 

Iszabella squinted and tilted her head.

 

“Nope, still a cat,” she shifted to lay on her side, so she was facing Gilbert. “You’re the one who’s not looking at it right.”

 

Gilbert furrowed his brow and moved his head to the left, then to the right. “Oh shit, that does look like a cat!”

 

“See, I’m always right,” Iszabella said proudly. She rolled onto her stomach and grabbed the little dandelion chain she’d started to make. There was a small white flower right in front of her, so she picked it, making a hole in the stem and adding it to the chain.

 

Gilbert pointed at another cloud, one further behind him. “That one looks like Gilbird.”

 

Iszabella shifted onto her back once more. “Oh yeah, it does.”

 

“See, I’m right sometimes.”

 

“I never said you were wrong,” Iszabella replied. She laid her head back on Gilbert’s stomach and continued her flower chain, until she had decided it was long enough. “Sit up,” she said as she sat up and scooted behind Gilbert. He did so, and Iszabella carefully placed the chain over his head and let it rest around his neck like a necklace. She sat on her knees so she would be taller than Gilbert, and leaned forward enough to take some silvery hair from the very front and start braiding it.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked, trying to twist his head around to look at her.

 

Iszabella pressed a hand against his cheek so he wouldn’t move. “Stay still. I’m making you pretty.”

 

“You mean I’m not already pretty?”

 

“You are. I’m just making you prettier,” Iszabella kissed the side of Gilbert’s head, then finished the braid and tied it off with the pink scrunchie that had been around her wrist. She carefully chose a few flowers and pushed them into the braid, then did the same with the other side of Gilbert’s hair, all while he grumbled and complained about his hair being pulled on. When she pulled out her phone and took a picture of her work then showed it to him, though, he couldn’t help smiling.

 

“You’re awesome, you know that?” he asked, and Iszabella leaned over and gave him a kiss.

 

\----

 

“Tolys, I love you, but why the hell did you bring me hummus? You know I hate those weird pea things.”

 

“They’re called garbanzo beans, and it’s not hummus. Open it.”

 

Iszabella rolled her eyes and held the container far away from her, as though expecting something nasty to come out when she opened it. She carefully pressed under the side of the lid and squeezed her eyes shut as she popped the top off. When she looked inside, though, all of her apprehension was immediately gone. “Oh my god you brought me Oreos! I love Oreos!” She paused for a moment, looking over the cookies, then looked back at Tolys once more. “If you can afford to buy me Oreos, you should be able to afford some real tupperware. Or at least a plastic bag.”

 

“For the last time, those kinds of things are bad for the environment. Do you know how much plastic the average American throws out each year? If I’m going to buy something that comes in plastic, I’m going to make good use of that plastic.”

 

“But doesn’t this stuff get like, dirty?” Iszabella took an oreo out of the container and twisted both halves apart. She stuck out her tongue and licked at the bottom of the sheet of cream, where it had started to come away from the cookie.

 

“Have you ever heard of washing the dishes?” Tolys asked, giving an exasperated sigh.

 

“Plastic stuff exists so you don’t have to wash the dishes.”

 

Tolys shook his head and rested his palm against his forehead. There was no use trying to talk to Iszabella about certain things, they just weren’t worth the effort. He looked around, searching for something else to talk about, and noticed the little plush unicorn sitting in her lap. “Where’d you get that?” he asked, pointing to it.

 

“Gilbert gave it to me.”

 

“You mean the guy I met with the glow in the dark braces?”

 

“Yeah,” Iszabella ate the last of the cream off of the cookie, then took a bite from it. She chewed slowly, thinking about something, then said, “I think we’re dating now.”

 

“You’re what?”

 

“We’re dating.”

 

Tolys raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth, as though to say something, then closed his mouth again. “Oh, okay,” he finally mumbled, still quite shocked. He looked down at his hands, then back up at Iszabella, who was eating the other half of the Oreo. “Are you happy?”

 

“Yeah. He’s really sweet. He snuck in his bird to cheer me up.”

 

Tolys sighed and reached out to take Iszabella’s hand in his. “I’m happy for you,” she gave him a look, raising an eyebrow and parting her lips slightly as though to say ‘oh really?’. “Really, Izzy, I’m glad you found someone you like, it’s just-”

 

“Just what? That I’m going to die?”

 

There was no use avoiding it. Tolys nodded solemnly, and Iszabella pulled her hand away from his.

 

“I can take care of myself, you know. Gilbert knows I’m sick. He knows my only chance of getting out of here is in a body bag.”

 

“I know you can take care of yourself, I’m just worried you might not be making the best decision.”

 

Iszabella put the lid back on the hummus container. “Can you leave me alone? And take your Oreos with you. I don’t want them.” She shoved the container into his hands, then turned to lay on her side, facing away from him. She heard Tolys sigh and get up, and the soft sound of his footsteps faded as he left the room. When she couldn’t hear them anymore, Iszabella bit down hard on her lip and her vision blurred with tears.

 

\----

 

“Hey, Izzy, are you alright?”

 

She stared down at the unicorn in her hands, chewing on her lower lip.

 

“It’s alright, you don’t have to talk about it,” Gilbert sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her. She rested her head on his chest and leaned in until she was close enough that he could fully hug her.

 

“I had a fight with Tolys.”

 

“Oh. I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

 

Iszabella nodded. “He’s worried about us dating. Because of me. Because I’m not doing well.”

 

Gilbert hummed in understanding and reached up to stroke her hair.

 

“You don’t think he’s right, do you? Do you think we should like, break up?”

 

“Izzy-”

 

“I shouldn’t have kissed you. I mean, I pushed this on you, it was a stupid idea.”

 

“Izzy!” Gilbert gently pushed her away and held onto her shoulders so he could see her face. “If I hadn’t wanted to get into a relationship, I wouldn’t have kissed you back. I would have told you if I wasn’t interested. You’re sick, I am too. Both of our days are numbered. We shouldn’t let that stop us from enjoying ourselves, okay?”

 

Iszabella took in a deep breath and nodded. Realizing how harsh he’d been, Gilbert pulled her into his lap and kissed the top of her head. “Are you okay?” he asked, just to be sure.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Gilbert stroked her hair until she didn’t feel so tense and she was no longer biting down on her lip. When he tilted her head up to give her a quick kiss, he saw her dart her tongue out to lick some blood away from where she’d broken the skin.

 

“Hey, I had an idea. One sec.” Gilbert pulled back a little and searched through the large front pocket of his sweatshirt. He pulled out his phone, a pair of broken headphones, some loose birdseed, and a crumpled up receipt for a stuffed unicorn, all of which he set on the bed, before taking out a little plastic package. He showed it to Iszabella, whose eyes went wide.

 

“Plastic bugs? What the hell are we going to do with those?”

 

Gilbert grinned mischievously. “We’re gonna hide them in the nurses’ stations.”

 

Iszabella let out a little snort of laughter. “You’re hilarious sometimes, you know that?”

 

“And awesome too, right?”

 

“Yes, you’re also awesome,” Iszabella tilted her head back and kissed the corner of Gilbert’s mouth. “Come on, let’s go hide some bugs.”

 

Gilbert put his things back in his pocket and got up. He held out a hand and helped Iszabella up, then wrapped an arm around her for support. “Let me know if you get tired, okay? Or if you feel dizzy or want to sit down or anything.”

 

Iszabella smiled gratefully. “I will, I promise.” She took the packet of bugs from Gilbert’s hand and looked them over, then pulled off the piece of cardboard on the top and tossed it into the trash can by her door. As they walked into the hall, she shook a few of the bugs into her hand and looked them over. “So we’ve got a spider, a beetle, and uh… I’m pretty sure that’s a centipede.”

 

Gilbert plucked the bug out of her hand and glanced over its plastic legs. “Nah, looks more like a millipede.”

 

“I don’t think the nurses will give a shit how many legs it has.”

 

“I still think I’d be more scared of a millipede than I would be of a centipede. They’re more creepy crawly-ish.”

 

Iszabella gave a little snort of laughter. “They’re both equally creepy,” she said, and took the insect back. They glanced around to make sure the hall was empty, then hurried to the little table backed up against a corner of the wall. She carefully set the insects down, hiding them where they could be easily found by a nurse going about her daily activities.

 

They went to two other nurses’ stations within the same general area, emptying the plastic bag of bugs. Then, they sat down together on one of the couches in the hallway, waiting for their first victim.

 

It wasn’t long before they heard a shrill scream off to their left, and saw a nurse run past, holding out a stethoscope with a plastic spider attached to it. Gilbert burst out laughing and Iszabella couldn’t help but join in. The nurse came back moments later, having discovered the bug was fake, and started to scold them, which only made them laugh more.

 

\----

 

“Izzy. Psst, Izzy, wake up!”

 

Iszabella turned over and opened one eye, then closed it and shook her head, mumbling something too soft to be heard.

 

“Come on, Izzy, it’s important. I want to show you something.”

 

Iszabella opened her eye again, then the other one and blinked a few times. Her vision focused, and she stared first at Gilbert whose face was barely a foot in front of hers, then at the clock on her nightstand. “Gil. It’s midnight. What the hell can be this important?”

 

“It’s a surprise. Trust me, it’s awesome. You have to get up!”

 

Iszabella sighed and forced herself to sit up. She wasn’t one to get out of bed quickly, but didn’t seem to have a choice, as Gilbert easily lifted her right up, making the blankets fall off of her and into a pile on the bed.

 

“Wait, wait, I have to switch my oxygen,” she laughed softly and pushed against Gilbert’s chest so he would put her down. She took off the cannula she had been wearing and picked up the little black bag on her nightstand. She hooked the tube behind her ears and made sure it wouldn’t fall off, then pressed a little button on the machine inside. “Okay, show me your surprise,” she said, and moved to stand up, but Gilbert picked her back up before she had the chance to do so.

 

Even though Iszabella insisted that she was perfectly able to walk on her own and that she didn’t want Gilbert to strain himself, he refused to put her down, until they were at the smoking balcony on the other side of the floor. He carefully pushed the door open, holding his breath until they were safely outside because he’d been scared to set off some sort of alarm. He took Iszabella to the very edge, where they could see all the other buildings around them in the city, but his eyes were focused on the sky.

 

“So that little bit of light right there is Jupiter,” he pointed up and Iszabella followed his finger until she saw what he’d indicated. “And then if you look to the right, since it’s so clear tonight, you can also see Venus,” he pointed to where it was, then glanced down at Iszabella, who was looking up at the planets with awe in her eyes. “Pretty awesome, huh? Was it worth getting out of bed for?”

 

He watched a smile spread on her face, and she turned slowly towards him. He rested his hands on her hips and pulled her in so she could rest her forehead against his chest. He barely caught what she said, because she was so quiet, but he heard her murmur, “you’re out of this world, you know that?”

 

\----

 

Tolys went through the folder the school made every week for Iszabella. He made sure the printed instructions for her Civics homework was in there, and slipped her graded Othello essay into the left pocket. For a moment, he imagined her smiling when she saw that she’d gotten a ninety-eight percent, but then he was reminded of the way she’d angrily turned away from him at their last visit. 

 

She was the kind to hold onto things for a long, long time.

 

He set the folder on the kitchen counter, and looked through the pantry to see if there was anything she would like. Last week’s Oreos were still in the hummus container, and he knew she would be able to tell that they weren’t fresh, so he found a new container, this time a clear one that had once had cream cheese in it, and filled it with some gummy bears stolen from his younger brother and a few Girl Scout cookies he’d picked up from a neighbor. 

 

“Eduard! I’m going to visit Iszabella! Make sure to lock the door after Raivis comes home!” he yelled, to which the only reply was a grunt from somewhere upstairs. Tolys grabbed his keys off of a hook beside the door and went out to his car, a dark blue subaru he’d gotten cheap off of the previous owner.

 

As he backed out, Tolys turned on the radio and scrolled through the stations. A station playing classical music caught his attention and he left it on there, humming along to the song once he recognized it. Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2. He recalled taking piano lessons with Iszabella when they were younger. She had been talented, but her family had never been able to afford a piano for her. They’d never been able to afford much because of her costly medical bills. Still, sometimes at school she had eaten lunch in the music teacher’s room and sat and played whatever she could find on the teacher’s grand piano. 

 

Tolys felt his stomach twist as he thought of when she still had been at school. Even though it was now nearly five months after the last time she’d been there a full week, he still wasn’t used to being without her. Sure, he had his friends in the football team, but they were loud and rowdy and seemed to completely forget he existed at times. He’d taken to spending the lunch period in the library instead.

 

He pulled into the hospital parking lot and rolled down his window to take a ticket from the machine. When he found a space near the wing Iszabella was in, he placed the ticket on his dashboard and grabbed the container of sweets and the folder before leaving his car.

 

By now, Tolys knew the hospital as well as the back of his hand. He signed in, clipped the visitor’s pass to the pocket of his jean jacket, and walked down the left hallway, turning right at the first set of doors. Iszabella’s door was closed, so he knocked apprehensively, rocking back and forth on his feet as he waited for a response. 

 

“Who is it?”

 

Tolys swallowed. He wondered if Iszabella was still mad at him, if she would send him away when she heard his voice. “It’s me. Tolys.”

 

There was silence, and then he heard faint footsteps, and the door opened. Iszabella was glaring, and she had her arms crossed over her chest. “It’s about time,” she said, then turned around and went to sit on her bed with her legs curled to her chest.

 

“I wanted to apologize for what I said last time. It was insensitive. I never should have said anything to begin with, it’s not my place to tell you whether or not to date someone.” Tolys stood awkwardly in the doorway, and he noticed almost immediately that Iszabella was holding the stuffed unicorn she’d been given.

 

“Yeah. You were an asshole.”

 

Tolys nodded in resignation. He waited, wondering what Iszabella would say next. He watched her pick at a fraying part of her sweater’s sleeve, before getting back up and walking over to him.

 

“Thanks for coming back. I didn’t want to have to stay mad at you.”

 

\----

 

Iszabella stared down at the hem of her shirt. She could feel her teeth starting to break the skin of her lip.

 

Gilbert had one hand pressed against the small of her back and the other on her bare thigh. He’d been kissing her passionately just moments before, but now he was sitting still, waiting.

 

“Maybe I can’t do this,” she mumbled, and she bit down on her lip once more to stop it from trembling. “I’m sorry, I’m killing the mood,” she whispered, tears straining her voice.

 

“What’s bothering you?”

 

Iszabella shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest.

 

“Is it your scars?”

 

She nodded, and Gilbert felt her legs trembling. He reached out and wiped tears away from her cheek. 

 

“Remember when you told me it was okay to be scared and to not always be brave? Before I had my surgery? That goes for you too- hey, hey, don’t cry- you don’t always have to be brave or certain about everything. You’re already so much braver than I could ever be, and I admire you so much.”

 

Iszabella nodded. “I’m worried about something stupid,” she whimpered, and Gilbert brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’m worried I’m not going to look like what you wanted me to.”

 

Gilbert frowned. He rubbed his hand in circles over Iszabella’s back. “That’s what you’re scared of?” he asked, but there was no condescension in his tone. Iszabella nodded and he took her hand and gently squeezed it. “You’ll never not be pretty to me. I promise.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Really. There’s already so much about you that I think is pretty. Your eyes, your freckles,” he leaned in and kissed her cheek, “your smile, your laugh, the shape of your chin,” he kissed the side of her jaw, “your fingers and the palms of your hands.”

 

“Wait,” Iszabella gently pushed his hands away. She toyed with the hem of her shirt for a few seconds, before breathing in and pulling her shirt off all at once. She let it fall to the floor, with the rest of their clothes.

 

Gilbert pulled her close once more and kissed the side of her neck, down to the freckles dotted over her shoulders. He gave a gentle kiss to the reddened scar beneath her collarbone, then to the slight bulge of the defibrillator beneath her skin. He could feel her holding her breath, and when he gently rested his hand on her chest, he could feel the beating of her heart, fast and weak, but at the same time the strongest, most resilient thing on Earth. He traced a finger over the long scar between her breasts and let his hand rest on the very top of her stomach. 

 

Gilbert leaned in and kissed the top of the scar, and Iszabella let out the breath she was holding.


	3. Myocardial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So with this, I am celebrating a huge milestone: my first finished multi-chapter fic!!! I really hope you guys enjoy!

It was still early enough that the orange light of the sunrise was filtering into the room through the side of the windows, where the curtains didn't cover. Gilbert's arm was tingling and Iszabella's shoulder pressed right into his elbow. She had her mouth open slightly and there was a bit of dried up drool on the side of her lip. When Gilbert tried to move and check his phone, he found that Iszabella's arms were stubbornly clamped around his waist, and his only choice was to pull her closer. She let out a tiny noise and for a moment he was scared that he'd woken her up, but then she pressed her cheek against his chest and went back to her quiet snoring. 

 

Gilbert's fingers wandered over her side, to her hips where he could feel the bones. He rubbed the small of her back, tracing the very last vertebra before her tailbone. 

 

He kissed the top of her head and rested his chin against her soft hair. He swallowed and glanced around just to make sure they were alone, and whispered, “I love you.”

 

That was the second time he'd said it aloud. The first was the night before, when Iszabella had been laying in his arms and telling him sweet nothings for pillowtalk, and the words had just come out of their own accord.

 

And he meant them.

 

\----

 

“Excuse me, could I ask you two a favor?”

 

Both Gilbert and Iszabella looked up when they heard someone in the doorway. There was a young woman there, leaning against the doorframe and holding a heavy cloth purse and a pillow in her hands. She looked exhausted, with bags under her eyes and her hair nearly falling out of the messy bun it was in. Iszabella seemed to recognize her, but Gilbert didn’t think he’d ever seen her before.

 

“Yeah, what do you need?”

 

The woman sighed. “I hate to ask you but I can’t find any of the nurses and I really need to run home and let my dog out and get some things, I’ll just be gone a half hour at most, do you think you could keep an eye on Peter while I go out? He’s asleep, so you won’t really have to do anything, but it’ll give me peace of mind to know someone’s watching him. I’ll pay you, how does ten dollars sound?”

 

Iszabella shifted away from Gilbert and stood up. “I’d be glad to watch him. And you totally do not need to pay me, you deserve some time to get your stuff done.” She turned around and looked at Gilbert, who stood up as well.

 

“Yeah, ma’am, it’s no trouble.”

 

The woman smiled gratefully. “Thank you guys. Really.”

 

Iszabella blushed a little and followed the woman to the room next to hers. There was a small bed in the middle, with a boy laying in it who couldn’t have been more than two years old. He was fast asleep, one hand tightly squeezing a stuffed bear, the other pressed against his lips with his thumb in his mouth. The woman came over and kissed the top of this head, then grabbed her keys off the bedside table and left.

 

There was a chair by the bed, so Gilbert sat down in it, and gently pulled Iszabella into his lap. Whispering, so as not to disturb the sleeping boy, he asked, “do you know this lady and her kid?”

 

“Yes. Well, not very well. They were moved to this room yesterday, and I spoke to the woman a little. Her husband’s a judge and doesn’t get much time off work, and their son was diagnosed with a heart defect when he was born, and things kind of suddenly got worse. I feel bad for them.”

 

Gilbert nodded solemnly. “Did you just end up in the hospital all of a sudden when you were little like him?”

 

Iszabella turned to the side and draped her legs over the arm of the chair. She rested her forehead under Gilbert’s chin. “When I was four- almost five. We went for a checkup and the doctors found that the surgeries they’d done when I was a baby hadn’t worked like they were supposed to, and it was putting a lot of strain on my heart and making it hard for oxygen to get everywhere it needed to.”

 

“And then you just had to stay in the hospital? Like him?” he gestured toward the boy asleep in the bed.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Gilbert frowned and looked down at her. She was looking at her hands and had her lower lip trapped under her front teeth. “Can I ask you something?” he asked, watching as she carefully tilted her head up to look at him. He could feel that she was nervous, so he added, “you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

 

Iszabella thought for a second before she nodded.

 

“Did you ever get to do normal kid stuff, or were you always in the hospital?”

 

She didn’t answer immediately, and Gilbert could tell she was thinking, so he closed his mouth and waited.

 

Iszabella placed her hand gently over Gilbert’s hand, which was resting on her thigh. She traced her finger over the curve of his nail and under his thumb to the callous on his fingertip. “Kind of. I mean I knew I wasn’t a normal kid because none of my other friends had to be on oxygen or go to the hospital nearly every week or take a ton of medicines, but like, my parents always made sure I didn’t have to completely give up being like, normal. I still got to go to school and be with my friends and that kind of stuff.”

 

She paused and pressed her forehead against the side of Gilbert’s neck for a moment. He turned his hand over and squeezed hers. When she continued speaking, she was whispering even quieter than she had before. “I don’t feel normal now. I had to stop going to school early this year and when I was there I felt like everyone was walking on eggshells around me, like they thought I was some sensitive little…” she shrugged and shook her head. “It sucked. I wanted to cheerlead but I can’t pass a sports physical. No one wanted to date me, I had to go to junior prom with Tolys.”

 

“What’s so bad about that?”

 

“He left me halfway through the night to dance with the football captain, and ended up going home with him. I mean I’m glad he found someone he likes, but that was supposed to be our special night.”

 

Gilbert ran the fingers of his free hand through her hair. “You know, I’d take you to prom.”

 

Iszabella let out a breathy, sad laugh. “It’s too late for that. Prom was two weeks ago. And anyway, I don’t think they would have let us both out of the hospital, even just for a night.”

 

Gilbert frowned. “You missed your senior prom? But that’s one of the most important parts of high school.”

 

“I missed a lot of the important parts. It’s fine, though. I’ve got other stuff. I’ve got Tolys to sneak in candy for me and I’ve got my parents to drive me nuts, and I’ve got you, and right now that’s all I need.”

 

\----

 

Gilbert had said he was content with watching Iszabella play Fallout, since it was just a one player game, and as long as that was alright with him, she was content with letting him play with her hair and hold her.

 

He was the backseat driver of the video game world, and would always try to tell her what to do and where to go and how to play. That would bother most people, but for Iszabella, it just became background noise, until she didn’t even notice that he’d stopped talking sometime after she’d fought an onslaught of bloodbugs.

 

She noticed when he fell asleep, though, because he was a snorer, and her head was right on his chest so she could feel the rumble of each heavy breath. She paused the game and shifted off of him. Iszabella laid her head just below Gilbert’s arm, which was still loosely wrapped around her, and looked up at him, watching the rise and fall of each breath.

 

His skin was pale, as it had always been, but more recently she’d noticed the pinkness under his cheeks fading. There was a bit of stubble on his chin and above his lip, in odd little patches that she doubted would ever grow into anything more. She found that she couldn’t imagine Gilbert with a beard, because even though he had that sharp jaw and rugged handsomeness she’d always associated with men with beards, she saw him as a boy. Plus, she thought a white beard would look kind of odd, like a polar bear attached to his face.

 

Iszabella reached up a hand and traced the curve of his lower lip. She rested her fingertips on the dip between his lip and his chin and wondered if he could feel her touching him, and if he could, if he would remember it when he woke up. His eyelids fluttered slightly and she wondered if he was dreaming. And if he was, was he dreaming about her?

 

\----

 

“Hey, Gil, are you alright?”

 

Gilbert forced himself to smile. He breathed in, out, looked at Iszabella’s delicate blonde eyelashes and tried to ignore the sharp pain in his chest.

 

“Yeah, just got a little lost in thought.”

 

\----

 

“You look pretty,” Gilbert remarked.

 

Iszabella put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “You can’t just say everything I’ve put on is pretty. You have to choose the best one.”

 

“But you look pretty in everything.”

 

Iszabella rolled her eyes. “Come on, I’ll narrow it down. Dress, skirt, or pants?”

 

“Which one do you want to wear?”

 

“Seriously? You’re supposed to pick one.”

 

Gilbert sighed and shook his head, muttering something about not understanding girls. “Fine, skirt.”

 

“That’s better,” Iszabella turned around and picked up two skirts off of the chair next to her bed, holding them up. “Denim or pink?”

 

Gilbert shrugged, earning another eye roll from Iszabella. 

 

“Fine, fine. Denim.”

 

Iszabella raised an eyebrow. “Did you think through your choice, or are you just like, saying that to have something to say?”

 

“I thought it through.”

 

“Promise?”

 

Gilbert held back a laugh at how stupid this was. “Promise,” he replied, sounding as serious as he could manage. That seemed to be good enough for Iszabella, because she took off her pajama pants, tossed them on the bed, and put on the skirt. 

 

“Now, I was thinking of wearing my black shirt, but I don’t think it would look good with the denim skirt, it would be cuter with the pink skirt.”

 

“Then why didn’t you choose the pink skirt?”

 

Iszabella crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “You said the denim skirt looked good.”

 

“They both look good.”

 

“Then why did you tell me to wear the denim skirt?”

 

Gilbert sighed and shook his head. He had no idea what to say, because it seemed like all possible responses would just make Iszabella even more unhappy. She was looking over the pink skirt, a small frown on her face.

 

“What about this?” she held up a sunshine-yellow turtleneck sweater. “With the denim skirt.”

 

“Yeah, that’s cute,” Gilbert stood up and walked up to her. He wrapped his arms around her bare waist and clasped his hands over her lower back. “You’re just really cute, y’know? And that sweater’s the same color as Gilbird, which makes it cuter.” He smiled and looked down into Iszabella’s eyes. She was blushing, and trying to hide it by pressing her face into the sweater. 

 

“I’m still mad at you,” she mumbled, but her actions went against her words, because she hugged Gilbert back and kissed his collarbone.

 

She pulled away and put on the sweater, then slipped on a pair of vans sitting in front of her bed. “Can you do my makeup?” she asked, turning back to Gilbert.

 

“I… can try?” he said, and that was convincing enough for Iszabella, because she handed him a little pink cosmetic bag. “What do I do first?”

 

Iszabella sat down on the bed, her legs crossed, and Gilbert sat in front of her with the makeup bag next to him. “Concealer. Over here.” She traced her finger over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, where there was a smattering of fading freckles.

 

“Concealer? But doesn’t that cover stuff up?” he asked, confused.

 

Iszabella furrowed her brows and looked at him strangely. “Uh… yeah? That’s the point, anyway.”

 

Gilbert looked over a little tube of makeup the same color as Iszabella’s skin. He set it back in the bag and looked over at her, frowning slightly. “Why would you want to cover up your freckles? They’re cute.”

 

“Not really.” 

 

Gilbert touched Iszabella’s cheek and pressed his palm under her jaw so she wouldn’t hide her face. “I think they’re cute. Leave them alone, don’t cover them up.”

 

Iszabella sighed and leaned into his hand. “I don’t like them.”

 

“Well I do,” Gilbert replied, and Iszabella knew from his tone that he wasn’t going to change his mind.

 

“Okay. Fine. There should be a dark blonde brow pencil in there. You just have to draw little light strokes over my eyebrows, like you’re adding hairs. It makes them look thicker.”

 

Gilbert searched through the bag and pulled out what looked like a colored pencil. Iszabella nodded in approval and he pulled off the plastic top. She leaned her face into the side of his hand and closed her eyes, a peaceful expression on her face. At first, Gilbert drew too lightly, because he was scared to press too hard and hurt her, but Iszabella urged him on and he managed to figure out the right amount of pressure to use. He put the cap back on the pencil when he was done and leaned back to admire his work.

 

“What do I do now?”

 

“You can hand me the eyeliner and a mirror so I can do my eyes.”

 

It took a little searching, but Gilbert pulled those two things out of the bag and watched, enraptured, as Iszabella carefully painted delicate little wings onto her eyelids. Her lips were parted slightly as she focused, and she was completely still, except for her hand.

 

When she was done and had put the little pot of eyeliner back into her bag, Gilbert asked, “do girls usually do all this to just go to a movie with friends?”

 

Iszabella shrugged. “It’s special for me. I don’t get to go out much, so I like to look pretty when I do. Dressing nicely and doing my makeup makes me happy, I guess.”

 

“If it makes you happy, why don’t you do it here, too?”

 

Iszabella smiled sadly. “I don’t have any reason to look nice here. I’m sick, I don’t feel good, I’m not gonna like, put on a nice dress just to lay in bed in it.”

 

Gilbert frowned but gave a somewhat understanding nod. He watched Iszabella rummage through the bag and hold out a handful of tubes of lipstick to him. 

 

“Which do you think would look best?” Iszabella paused, then smiled mischievously. “And you can’t say all of them. You have to pick one.”

 

Gilbert gave an exaggerated huff and roll of his eyes, and started looking over the lipsticks he’d been handed. He didn’t know the first thing about color, but there was a pretty red one in there that looked liked the kind movie stars wore, so he took the top of of that one and carefully put the lipstick on her, pausing every few seconds so she could rub her lips together. She looked in her little handheld mirror once more, smiling when she saw her face, then leaned in and kissed Gilbert on the cheek.

 

After she’d left, Gilbert picked up her little handheld mirror just to look at himself, and found a red, smudgy lipstick mark right on his cheekbone.

 

\----

 

Gilbert had never exactly been a light sleeper, but the combination of having a younger brother and being responsible for quite a few pets meant that he’d developed a sixth sense of sorts, and always seemed to wake up when he was needed.

 

The feeling that something wasn’t right pulled Gilbert out of a dream about playing the guitar in a band, and he awoke with a start, blinking a few times to adjust to the dim light of the room. Iszabella was in his arms, her forehead pressed against his chest and arms so tightly around him that he wondered if it hurt her. She was shivering, even with the heavy sweatshirt she’d borrowed from Gilbert and the down comforter wrapped around both of them. He stroked her hair and rubbed his hand in circles over her back, wondering what he could do to help. 

 

Iszabella whimpered and Gilbert gently shushed her. “You’re alright,” he whispered, “I’m here.” She trembled in his arms and, seeing that her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she seemed to still be asleep, he gently nudged her shoulder a few times. “Hey, Izzy, wake up,” he murmured, urgency in his voice.

 

She first curled in on herself more, but after a few moments she tilted her head up, blinking with confusion. “I-” she shook her head, unable to say anything more.

 

“You had a nightmare. You’re okay now,” Gilbert rested his hand against the middle of her back and focused on just keeping her close.

 

“I know,” she whispered, voice strained with the effort of holding back tears. Gilbert rubbed her shoulders and she let out a shaky sob, whimpering, “I know, I know, I know.”

 

Gilbert carefully sat up and helped Iszabella up. She leaned into his arms and he reached over to the nightstand so he could grab a cup of water. He held it to her lips and she managed to swallow a little through her sobs. The pale light from the crack in the window and the machines on the walls made the tears on her cheeks and the drops of water on her chin shine. She laid her head on his chest, hiccuping softly, and loosened her grip on Gilbert’s waist.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, once she’d calmed down more and wasn’t shaking so badly.

 

Iszabella nodded. She found Gilbert’s hand and locked her fingers with his. He squeezed gently and she squeezed back. “I was just in bed, and everything was normal, and then my heart started beating too fast and my defibrillator went off, but something went wrong and it wouldn’t stop going off and I couldn’t do anything.”

 

“Oh, Izzy, that’s awful.” Gilbert gave the top of her head a sympathetic kiss and he squeezed her hand again, as though that would squeeze away all of her fears and worries.

 

“It was,” she agreed. “I’m scared it could happen. These things can malfunction. It could just get stuck, going over and over and over again.” She bit her lower lip and Gilbert could see her jaw trembling. 

 

“That… could happen,” he replied, because he knew there was no point in lying. “But you’re in a hospital. They monitor how fast your heart is beating and what’s going on with you, and it would only take a few seconds before a nurse knew something was wrong and came to help. You’re in the safest place you could possibly be.”

 

Iszabella sniffled, and Gilbert added, “and if something like that happened, I’d know immediately and I’d run and find someone. I’ll always try to stop bad things from happening to you. Because I love you.”

 

“Promise?” Iszabella asked softly, though the small smile on her face showed that she was already convinced. She held up a pinky finger and Gilbert hooked his pinky with hers and kissed her finger just in front of where it met his.

 

“Promise.”

 

\----

 

Iszabella squeezed her eyes shut and squeezed Gilbert and Tolys’s hands as hard as she could. She blew out, hard, and used all the brainpower she possibly could to make her wish. When she opened her eyes, the candles were out on her cake and her parents were applauding. She pulled her hands away and pressed them into her lap, smiling widely. 

 

“Thank you guys so much, this is like, the best birthday ever,” she said. Her mother blushed and started cutting the cake with a plastic knife. “I want the piece with the most frosting,” she decided, and gleefully took the plate of pink and purple frosted strawberry cake that she was handed. 

 

“Wow, your mom’s a really good baker,” Gilbert commented through a mouthful of cake. Iszabella giggled and reached out to wipe a bit of frosting off his cheek. “Thanks Mrs. L, this is really good.”

 

“It is my pleasure,” Iszabella’s mother replied, and she started cutting out a slice of cake for herself.

 

“You should try her pierogies. She’s an amazing baker,” Tolys added.

 

Gilbert nodded in agreement, his mouth too full of cake for him to respond properly. For a while, no one spoke, because they were all too busy enjoying the treat. When Gilbert finished his slice, he set his plate down on the table and asked, “so, you’re an adult now. What’s the first adult thing you’re gonna do?”

 

“Well, I’m like, still waiting to be called for jury duty, so I guess for now I’m gonna watch an R-rated movie and not feel guilty.”

 

“That’s kinda lame. When I’m eighteen, I’m gonna buy cigarettes.”

 

“I didn’t take you as a smoker.”

 

Gilbert shrugged. “I could always become one. I just want to walk into a store, ask for a pack of cigarettes, show them my ID, and not have them refuse to sell them to me. That would make me feel powerful.” He grinned and gave Iszabella a quick kiss.

 

Iszabella and Gilbert spent the afternoon trying to teach Tolys to play Grand Theft Auto, but gave up after a while because he was really terrible at it and just didn’t seem to be able to learn. They sat together and talked until it was dark out and Iszabella’s parents and friend had to leave.

 

For a little, Gilbert and Iszabella just kept playing their video game, but as the nurses started to dim the lights in the hall and the hospital began to settle down, Iszabella set down her controller and pressed the pause button on Gilbert’s, then gently pulled it out of his hands. She got up and moved into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her chin against the side of his head. He smelled like ivory soap and when he tilted his head up and kissed her, she tasted sugary frosting on his lips. 

 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his lips inches from hers. 

 

Iszabella smiled and tilted her head forward so their foreheads touched and the very tips of their noses brushed. “I’m thinking about how lucky I am that I have you. How happy you make me.”

 

Gilbert cupped his hand around the small of her back. He closed his eyes and leaned in for another, longer kiss. Iszabella hummed contentedly against his lips and when he pulled away, she leaned forward to kiss him again. He reached up and stroked her cheek, which was damp with tears. “Why are you crying?” he whispered, moving slightly to the side so he could kiss the corner of her mouth and the side of her face. 

 

Iszabella sniffled then laughed, until she couldn’t laugh anymore. She caught her breath and pulled back to look properly into Gilbert’s eyes. “I didn’t ever think I’d get here. I didn’t think I’d live to be eighteen, but now I’m here, and I’m so happy, and I love my life so much.”

 

Gilbert beamed. He squeezed the side of Iszabella’s waist. “I’m so happy for you. You deserve this. You deserve to be happy,” he replied, and that was the most honest thing he’d ever said.

 

\----

 

“Gil! There’s someone right on your left! Shoot him!”

 

Iszabella nudged his shoulder and he got to work, pushing the controller’s joysticks to make his character run and pressing the shoot button as fast as he could, until the other character disappeared and his character walked over to where it had been, picking up all the loot that had been dropped.

 

“None of this stuff is even good,” he grumbled, scrolling through his inventory. 

 

“Gil!” Iszabella yelped, but it was too late, and the screen turned red. “Oh, shit, you died,” she said, voice tinted with laughter. “It’s my turn now.” She leaned over and tried to grab the controller from Gilbert, but he twisted to the side and held it away from her.

 

“Nuh-uh. It’s still my turn.”

 

“No, it’s my turn! It’s always my turn!” she laughed, rolling onto her side and trying to grab the controller from Gilbert’s hands. He opened his mouth as though to say something, but suddenly dropped the controller onto the bed and started coughing. Iszabella moved back and sat up, biting her lip. “Hey… Gil? You alright?” she asked, though she doubted he was.

 

He coughed a few more times, pressing the sleeve of his sweatshirt against his mouth, then nodded. He picked the controller up once more and grunted as he sat up. Iszabella noticed a little pink stain on his sleeve, and she sat by his side once more, hugging him protectively.

 

“You sure you’re okay?”

 

“Yeah, I’m sure. You don’t need to worry about me.” Gilbert kissed the top of her head and wrapped an arm around her. “Now, I realized I forgot my manners,” he held the controller out to Iszabella and said with a wink, “ladies first.”

 

\----

 

Iszabella blinked a few times and pressed her pillow against her ears to muffle the sound of the alarm in the hallway. By now, she’d gotten used to these kinds of disturbances in the night. She closed her eyes and drifted off once more as the sound of the alarm petered out.

 

\----

 

“We have some good news to share with you!” Dr. Edelstein was a regular visitor to Iszabella’s hospital room. He’d been the main cardiologist on her team since her mother had had a worrying ultrasound where the baby’s heart didn’t seem to be beating like it should have. Iszabella had known him so long and been around him so much that by now, he seemed like family.

 

“This morning we received news that a donor heart was found for you. It’s currently being transported here, and we’ve scheduled the transplant surgery for 2:00. I called your parents before I came to tell you, they’re on their way.”

 

Iszabella couldn’t speak. She pressed her hands against her wide-open mouth, shaking her head in disbelief. 

 

“Shut up…” she whispered.

 

The doctor gave her a good natured smile. “I’m very excited too,” he said, though he didn’t show it outwardly.

 

Iszabella grinned widely. She kicked off her blankets and grabbed her portable oxygen bag. “I have to… I’ll be back,” she said, almost frantically, and started running down the hall. She had the path to Gilbert’s room memorized from many a night spent sneaking there, and was turning down the hallway to where he was when someone crashed into her. She tripped into the wall, pressing her hands against it to steady herself. When she looked up, she was looking right at Tolys.

 

“Did you hear?” she asked, breathless and excited and on the verge of tears. Tolys nodded, giving her a small smile. “I have to tell Gilbert!”

 

Tolys’s smile faltered. “Izzy, maybe you should-” his words were lost as she grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall. She ran into Gilbert’s room, where the door was already open, and looked around for him.

 

He wasn’t in his bed.

 

The sheets were on the floor.

 

The pillows were pushed to the side.

 

Iszabella looked around, brows furrowed. “Gilbert? Where are you?”

 

Tolys reached out and gently took her hand. “Izzy. There’s something we need to talk about.”

 

Iszabella turned to him, a confused look on her face. “Can it wait? I need to tell Gil. I’m getting the transplant!”

 

Tolys frowned and took her other hand. “Look at me, Izzy, can you do that?” She looked up at him, into his eyes, still terribly confused. “Gilbert’s dead, Izzy.”

 

“If that’s supposed to be a joke, it’s not funny. Now let me go, I need to find Gilbert.” She tried to pull her hands away from Tolys’s, but he held on to them tightly.

 

“You have to listen to me. I talked to the nurses this morning, they thought it was better if I told you. Gilbert died last night. He had a heart attack. The doctors did everything they could.”

 

Iszabella shook her head. “No. You’re lying. I was with him yesterday. He was alive yesterday. He’s alive today, he’s fine. Stop it.”

 

“I’m not lying,” he said solemnly. “I’m so sorry, Izzy. I really am.”

 

Iszabella bit her lip and her chin trembled. Tears filled up her eyes and she shook her head, again and again until she was dizzy and all she could taste was saltiness.

 

“No. You’re wrong! You’re wrong! He can’t be dead! He can’t be!”

 

Iszabella sobbed and her legs trembled. She couldn’t see anymore. She couldn’t stand up. She felt a pair of strong arms lift her up, away from the hospital’s cold tile floor. She felt cold, freezing cold. The kind of cold that spidered out from somewhere deep inside her and reached every single part of her body until all she felt was numb.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

\---- 3 years later ----

 

Iszabella’s breath caught in her throat as she walked up the wooden steps to the house’s front porch. She rang the doorbell and stepped back, nervously shifting from one foot to the other.

 

There was the sound of shuffling footsteps, then a lock turning. The door opened, revealing a short, stout woman, with blonde hair and a kind smile on her face. “You must be Iszabella! Come in, come in,” she said, holding the door open wide for her. Iszabella walked into the house and wiped her feet on the doormat. She stood awkwardly in the coatroom while the woman closed the door back up, and allowed her to lead her into a warm kitchen which smelled of freshly baked bread and paprika.

 

“Here, have a seat. I just made tea,” the woman pulled out a wooden chair from the kitchen table and Iszabella sat down, crossing one leg over the other. She glanced at a framed picture of two women on the wall, then back at the woman bustling around the kitchen. She brought over two saucers and cups of hot water, along with an assortment of teas.

 

“Thank you, Ms. Hedervary.”

 

“Please, call me Katyusha, and there’s no need to thank me. It’s my pleasure. I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

 

Iszabella blushed and busied herself with choosing a tea. Katyusha sat across from her, smiling as she opened a chamomile teabag and put it into her cup.

 

“I wanted to ask you about your wife… who gave me her heart. What was she like?”

 

Katyusha looked fondly over at the picture on her wall. “Erzsebet was my entire world. I met her at a renaissance fair, she was in the jousting tournament.” She laughed softly, eyes lighting up as the memory came back. “I’d never seen someone so handsome in a suit of armor. And she was an amazing horseback rider. We started talking and I admitted to her that I was scared of horses, because they’re such large animals. She decided to give me horseback riding lessons. That was her passion, horseback riding. She loved those animals like they were her children.” Katyusha paused and took a sip of her tea. “She was one of the kindest people I’d ever met. I fell in love with her for that. She was beautiful, too, not just outside, but she was the kind of person who was beautiful everywhere.” Katyusha reached across the table and gave Iszabella’s hand a quick squeeze.

 

“It must have been so hard for you to lose her,” Iszabella murmured. Katyusha nodded sadly. “I… I know what it’s like too, I lost someone special to me too.”

 

Katyusha squeezed her hand again. “Her death was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to go through. But she gave you her heart. She saved your life. A piece of her is still living inside you.”

 

Iszabella leaned forward and lifted Katyusha’s hand to her chest, where her heart was beating steadily. “I’m so grateful. I hope she knows how thankful I am, and that I think about her and the gift she gave me every day.”

 

“I’m sure she does. And I’m sure that whoever you lost knows that you’re thinking of them too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So kind of a more serious note than I've ever done but I just want to take a quick moment to talk about how important organ donation is. I personally know two people whose lives have been saved by transplants, and the only way to make those possible is to sign up as an organ donor. In the united states, all you have to do is say you want to be an organ donor when you get your driver's license, and that means that when you die, your organs will be donated to many hospital patients who need transplants to improve or save their lives.


End file.
